


This is it Boys; This is War

by 3988Akasha



Series: Chicago [7]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death, Verisimilitude, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3988Akasha/pseuds/3988Akasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bass reflects on war, on everything that happened, that went wrong, that went right...everything. Nothing goes the way it's meant to anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is it Boys; This is War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElDiablito_SF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/gifts), [Dragomir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragomir/gifts), [Timid_Timbuktu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timid_Timbuktu/gifts), [hithelleth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hithelleth/gifts), [Steph_Schell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steph_Schell/gifts).



> So, um, I blame this on Anderson Cooper and his audiobook. Seriously.
> 
> This is still technically Bass' POV, if you squint.
> 
> Also, El, as you said, "I DO WHAT I WANT!"

He should have been more surprised; he should have seen it coming. Nothing ever goes the way he intended, not anymore. Miles warned him, in his own way, which is not so much a warning as a statement of fact that will probably end with everyone dead, but Miles chooses to ignore it, so you do too. That’s why he should have known it would all go to hell quicker than it had any right to, but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Maybe it would have been just as big a disaster if they’d stayed home.

Miles’ primary concern had been Danny. He should have put his concern elsewhere, Danny was a Matheson – enough said. It wasn’t quite as dramatic, as simple, as everyone dies, but it was a near thing. It wasn’t just the nameless people dressed up in the same outfit so they all blurred together into a sea of red-stained blue, no it was people with names, faces they’d all remember, some more fondly than others. Plenty of men in blue still died, nameless bodies that might never get buried, families that will never know how their last minutes were. Bass figured that’d be for the best because no one really wants to know, no one back home wants to hear the truth: they all die bloody in the end.

That’s the lie of it all though, the idea that you die for something greater, some bigger purpose, but the truth is you don’t. It’s what the giant propaganda machine exists for; it’s the balm you serve the masses, the giant placebo used to keep them from looking too closely at what they’re signing up for. You sell it hard because you have to, because on some level, you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid too. That’s how you know it’s necessary because you know the truth, the dark reality of nameless bodies littering a blood-stained field, cold fingers still griping weapons that couldn’t save them. It’s necessary though because it’s the only order around, and that’s what makes people accept it, makes them not scrutinize the line you feed them when they ask where their son is, why he died, why he’ll never come home. They need it; you need it, and it circles around like that forever because people are broken, and you can’t fix it, so you fight it. You give it a name and a color and a weapon and you spend your days trying to make all the colors the same, ignoring the red that runs in rivers through the arbitrarily drawn battle lines.

At one time, Bass had kept a list of the dead, something to commemorate their sacrifice. It was a little spiral notebook he’d found early, when you could still find things in the abandoned buildings, things missed, or ignored, by looters. Maybe they should have taken more of the paper; Bass thought so once, but Miles had shrugged it off, saying it wasn’t necessary. Maybe it wasn’t, but his little book had filled up quickly those first years. Names of men whose faces he couldn’t remember, and honestly, didn’t want to. Eventually, the notebook became kindling, something more important than memory because heat kept you warm, warmth kept you alive, life kept you from becoming a name in someone else’s spiral notebook – at least for a time. Looking back, it seemed silly, keeping a tally of the dead, like some sort of cruise director on the River Styx. Bass’ lips quirked at the thought, a scythe in one hand, blood from the blade’s tip dripping onto the notebook he held in his other. Over a loudspeaker a voice, probably Miles’, yelled “NEXT” to keep the line moving.

He didn’t need the notebook now, the names now less important than ever. They were all too numerous to count, too many bodies. It was as though the whole of the world were covered in them, the decomposing dead relining the crust of the earth with their blood, with their life, with their sacrifice. People died before the lights went out, and it was tragic, people stopped to mourn, people noticed – people felt something about it. Now the dead were like a speed bump, something annoying that should make you stop and evaluate your life, but instead it just annoyed you because everyone dies, and nowadays, everyone dies a lot, so why should this one be special? It shouldn’t, but it is – or it should be, you feel it sometimes when you stop, when the lifeless eyes are familiar to you because then you want the world to stop, to mourn with you, but they won’t, they’ll keep going and judge you for not moving along with them.

Not all war is vainglory. In moments, you almost know you’re going to live, going to make things better, going to survive. Ultimately, surviving is the goal though because most have given up on living. Living is a luxury most don’t have because they can’t afford it. Living comes with too many hang-ups, too many possibilities that things might turn out okay and hope is crippling. Everyone has seen the worst of it; everyone has lived through the worst day of their live. Until the next one. Of course, the first is the worst, or so it seems. The first time you see the blood well up from a wound you might have caused, but in the cacophony of violence it’s hard to tell your bullet from that of the guy standing next to you. That’s why this war is different, this fight more intense, except that it’s not – it’s not different at all. Dead is still dead, violence still violent and young men turn to old men with a weapon in their hand. They say it’s more personal, killing someone with your hands, the hilt of the sword flush against your palm, the tremor of the impact shooting up your arm, the power as you slice through someone’s flesh, slide through the skin like butter. Maybe it is; Bass can’t remember. Killing is killing; dead is dead. The blood on your hands is still red.

You tell the new guys, the young recruits with no lines on their faces, no shadows in their eyes, you tell them the killing gets easier, that the first one is the hardest. You lie. The killing never gets easier, they’re all the same. What changes is the way you feel about it – that’s what gets easier, and that’s not even the right word because it’s not easy. You grow numb, jaded, even so twisted that you begin to enjoy it – you get good at not feeling anymore. It’s no longer a person you’re killing, but the enemy, some faceless, nameless, family-less entity that represents everything that’s wrong with the world. So you kill it before it kills you and you can sleep at night because you’re alive so you might as well.

It’s worse when you know their faces, know their stories, know their families. The lucky few who get to know that their son died defending the Republic, that their service, their sacrifice, meant something intangible, secured future freedom, defeated the rebels who threatened their way of life. The lucky ones get to believe a lie because you masquerade it as truth and they’re so desperate for that to be real that they believe you, they don’t question the holes in your story, the ghosts lurking in the shadows behind you. When the faces you know, the names you remember, don’t have families it’s easier. There’s no one to apologize to for killing their son, father, brother. You didn’t kill them directly, but that long ago quit being a detail people paid any attention when their grief was still high, in the moment they allowed themselves to feel the loss. There’s no recompense for the blood on your hands, and you’re happy because while you might never forget, no one else will be bothered with it.

Rachel would never forgive them for what they’d done to Danny, not that either were looking for it. He’d never killed before, not really. The time with his dad, it didn’t count in the same way because it was a chain reaction of events that spiraled beyond his control. It was impulse. This was different. This was premeditated, this time he knew what he was doing, had time to think about it before. He now knew what red looked like, the various shades it wore in battle. The brightness of it as it first pooled from a wound, the rust color it took on as it dried on the cooling corpses, the way layers of it on your hands made it turn almost black until it flaked off in almost pink tones. Danny now knew what it felt like to always have blood on his hands, a burden no one had a right to give him, but everyone did anyway.

Civilians always die in combat. Somehow it’s worse when they do because they were never meant to be there, they didn’t sign on the dotted line, and they didn’t wear the brand like a shield against the death waiting for them just behind that next rock. It was always wrong place, wrong time – like it was for everyone who died alone on a battlefield. In the end, they all die alone, far from home, mired in the grime of another battle, another long campaign where you count it as winning when more of you come home alive than dead. Danny knew the civilians this time, the ones who lived, the ones who died. You could see it in his face, the pain of knowing someone’s face. It’s different than knowing the man standing next to you, shooting the same nameless masses as you. Miles would say there were no such thing as civilians anymore and Bass was inclined to agree. She was a pretty blonde with curly hair, pale skin, big eyes that stared up at the sky, waiting for it to take her home. Danny said she had kids back in England, but she’d given up on looking for them years ago, long before Ben found her. She died looking for Danny, for Charlie, determined to bring them back to a home that no longer existed.

In the middle, those not fighting for either side die in combat, in a war that’s not theirs, for a cause not their own. It’s almost a casualty of war, like a civilian, but not as devastating because they have a gun, a cause, a battle cry of their own. Miles always said it’ll be the next battle that will get him, never this one, the current one will never take him, but the next one, it will. Maybe he’s right, maybe it is always the next one, the one they haven’t seen because the current one wouldn’t dare take him after a proclamation filled with such steeled determination it might as well have been etched into the foundational stone of the world. This battle, this fight, took those in the middle, people that another time would have called mercenaries. A word full of empty meaning for morals no one could afford. It came down to something went wrong, then something else and you couldn’t stop it because you’re sinking in the quicksand of someone else’s screw-up, someone else’s mistake.

Mia should have known better, that’s what Nora told herself, told everyone as she slid her sister’s eyes closed for the last time, arranged her body in a more comfortable position before rigor mortis set in. Even the dead had a right to small comforts. No one should make a deal with Strausser, a sociopath who pointed a gun at Miles, a smile on his face as he told him he wasn’t the one with the problem. The scary thing is maybe he’s right. Maybe Strausser and his psychotic killing machine mentality is the healthy solution; he kills without fear of feeling anything about the dead because he doesn’t care. He enjoys it in a way the rest of them don’t, and hopefully never will. He’s good at it, like an art, like it’s a goal everyone else should strive to meet. Mia suffocated to death, her organs pressed against each other in a poor imitation of crucifixion, a slow death caused by one’s own weakness. You’ll live through being strung up by your wrists, so long as you maintain the strength to keep the weight off them, to pull yourself up to gasp for a lungful of air, always hoping you’ll have the strength to do it again and again and again. Her death wasn’t red like so many of the others, it wasn’t vibrant, there was no life to it; it was muted blue and grey, an oozing of life from someone who deserved better.

Wicked men lived. Deserving men died. Strausser lived, though Bass isn’t sure how. Miles had pistol whipped him with Bass’ Desert Eagle, just to prove a point. Before the blackout, Strausser would be sent for reconstructive surgery, now he’s just glad to be alive, his face an eternal testament to Miles Matheson’s rage. With the first strike, Danny’d looked away, covered his eyes, unable to watch his uncle beat someone. By the fifth, Danny was enraptured, eyes hard, hands on his hips. The reasons no longer matter, no one cares why Danny was able to watch, what changed, what caused the disconnect in his brain. They only care that he did and it was a welcoming, a passage into a brotherhood – he became one of us. It was easy to watch brutality, easy to see the way flesh and bone gave way under the power of wrath, of hate, of responsibility. Someone had to be accountable for the death, for the mistake, for the state of the world. Strausser was as good a choice as anyone else.

Fate was capricious, without any sense of order. She came through the world and touched people at random, no reason, no pattern. Just a quick choice of who lives, who dies, who loves, who doesn’t. Aaron doesn’t make any sense. He should have been dead long ago. He’s too big, too nerdy in a world where that’s no longer a vital skill, and a coward. He hid behind a tree during most of the fighting, so maybe cowardice is wise if it keeps you alive. Perhaps then courage is a reckless suicide hidden behind the thin veil of heroism. Maybe in this new world where life is a best a day to day experience in which you hope you’re not too hungry, too scared, too cold, too tired, maybe everyone is waiting for their chance to be chosen, for fate to tap them on the shoulder and welcome them with a smile to a better world, far from the dark and the cold and the pain. That’s the truth of war. That’s the escapism the adventure seekers thrive on, look for every chance they get, each action more dangerous than the next.

Someone once wrote that you’re never more alive than right before you die. Bass didn’t used to believe it. But, he did now. He remembered the feeling, sitting in the cemetery, alone with his bottle of Jack, the weight of his gun light because he knew what it represented. Knew it offered a way out; the ultimate escape from the world, from everything it held – both the good and the bad. Miles offered him an alternative, a different escape. Come with me, he’d said, without saying the words. We’ll do this together, he’d continued, as though it wasn’t the obvious course of action. They did, they went, and they walked the earth together, seeking that feeling, that knowledge that this moment was your last. In that moment, you feel it all, it suffuses your body until you feel you’ll burst; it’s so much that it hurts, it aches and you long for it. You want to feel that _alive_ all the time, so you keep going. One foot in front of the other until you find yourself on another battlefield, in another campaign, fighting another nameless army of people all seeking that same feeling; you’re all united in your quest. Each trying to send the other on their way, give them the bliss of that moment, but always trying to avoid it for themselves, to put it off as long as possible because you all know it’ll only happen once so you want it to count.

War is hard, but peace is harder. Peace is terrifying, because you live in the constant fear that it will disappear like fog in the wee hours of the morning. Blink and you’ll miss it. War isn’t hard because you want it to be over, you don’t live in fear of it being gone, because it feels like it never will be and it won’t. There is always another enemy to fight, another fight to pick. Peace takes different skills, ones not used during war when sought after outcomes are simple: live, you did well; die, you didn’t. Peace brings grey areas, compromises – half lives. Peace means making choices with far wider affects than a single body on a battleground. Many times peace means not killing someone when every instinct you have screamed at you to kill them and move on, be done with it. Peace was living in the delicate balance between war and not war. Neither makes people happy though. It’s never what they asked for, never what they expected and it’s always your fault. Things were always better before and they will always be better after. Peace was just a pause in the fighting, the breath between wars.

Sex was always better during war because peace made you complacent. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about sex when things were this bad, but things were always this bad for someone. Miles was more alive during war than during peace, the long hours of negotiations, of politicking wore him down to the point that he wanted to start a war just to avoid the boredom, the monotony of it all. The meaningless pleasantries exchanged by two people who’d really rather kill each other and aren’t quite sure why they’re not. During war, everything was more immediate, more intense, more intimate. The ones you love you love more deeply, the ones you kill, you kill more intimately. Everything seems so much better, even when it’s all going to hell and you’re never sure how you’ll come back from this or even more terrifying, not sure if you want to because you know it will never feel the same, never be this good or this bad again. If you’ve learned anything, it’s that you always want the best, the worst, the most, the least, the longest, the shortest – the extremes. It’s either Miles forcing him over the desk, the ink from the changes to their most recent campaign map staining his skin as Miles pounds into him with a desperation that can only be reached during war, or it’s what feels like hours of slow, languid movements in front of the fireplace in their room when there’s nothing more pressing to be doing, no urgency at all and he takes Bass so slowly he feels every inch of skin, but it’s just as shattering.

The breaths between battles, because war is a living thing, pulsing with life, energy, blood ready to be expended in the name of some man’s vision of the world, those breaths give you a chance to take a tally of everything, to determine a victor. At times, it seems as though whoever is left alive wins, sometimes not. Technically, they won that day. All of the rebels had been killed, but they’d lost, too. Nora, a vital piece in their larger chess game with the world, would be much harder now, much less useful. All because Strausser got creative, thought he could make thing of himself, thought he could play god. They all did, Miles more than most, Bass too, if he were honest, but Strausser had screwed it up. Mia died. It wasn’t entirely his fault, but honesty was rarely counted as high priority during war. It was easier to lie to yourself, to your men, to your boss. Danny didn’t cry; the woman with the curly blonde hair would haunt him whether he cried or not, so it really shouldn’t matter, but it did. He was young. The young should still cry, save emotionless faces for the older ones who were too numb to care. Aaron had something important, something Ben gave him. Bass knew there had to be a reason for him to be saved, for this person to be so special to Ben. The necklace was meaningless to him, but Aaron had nearly shown a spine when Miles asked him for it. For a man that gutless, it was important and important things belonged in Miles’ pocket.

This one broke even. Sometimes that was all you got so you held it close and pretended it was a win. It’s what you told everyone back home, all a part of that giant propaganda machine. You show everyone the spoils of war, the necklace that must be important because it was Ben’s dying act, giving it to this man who should be dead, who might be dead before he’s ever useful. Make him a hero before you throw him in prison. The stories become farther from the truth because that’s what a story is and no one wants the truth. Nora will have time to grieve, to get angry, to plot her revenge while she rots in a cell because we still need her to be useful, we still need her to help us. Prisoners are better when they’re like the dead, nameless faces in the same sea of bodies on the ground of forgotten battlefields. You don’t feel for them then, you forget them, you ignore them. Faces with names become people again and people are dangerous; they make you feel and the feeling lets you know you’re alive, but makes you wish you were dead. You tell Rachel to be happy her boy came back alive; you tell her you have more than you do. You lie. Charlie looks up at you like you’re a monster, and you are, but so is everyone around you so you almost forgot. Miles pours himself a drink, sits in front of the fire and sleeps until the next battle, the next time blood must be shed. Bass will sit next to him, refill the glass and hold him at night because he knows the feeling, knows the demons of war, knows the pain of feeling, the pain of not feeling – it’s all the same now.

Someone once said, “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending.”

It never is.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd so let me know what you see.
> 
> Also, the "someone once said" quotes come from _The Things They Carried_ by Tim O'Brien


End file.
